Email Marketing In A World of Mobility, Social Media and Short Attention Spans.

Email marketing (remember what that is) is one of the most powerful ways to ensure you can stay in front of your customers on a regular basis. It’s one of the best ways to gently remind prospective customers that you are around – so when they are ready – they will hopefully buy from you.
Social media marketing (active or passive marketing through Facebook and Twitter) is great. Paid, cost per click marketing on Google or Bing is a good thing. Organic search engine optimization is must.
Yet email marketing and your web site are still the bedrock and foundation for most online marketing success stories.
The first thing people see in your email marketing message is the subject line, this is so important. It’s also important to ensure that the email marketing company you are working with (ie: Campaigner, Constant Contact, Vertical Response , iContact is working hard to ensure their relationships with Internet Service Providers and large corporations is reputable. If not, the emails you send on their services, will get blocked. For example, many companies used to (maybe many still do) block emails from AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo to reduce their intake of space.
Wendy Lowe, Campaigner’s director of product marketing, gives her insight on the importance of subject lines, email marketing in a mobile world and email marking in a world social media excitement.Regarding mobile marketing:
Wendy advises email marketers to keep their templates clean, simple and easy-to-read to ensure effectiveness on mobile devices. If you know your campaigns will be viewed on mobile devices, think in bullets – descriptive text doesn’t catch the reader’s eye as quickly as bulleted text. Bullets direct mobile readers to the main points of your campaign.

Keep your messages short and to-the-point, and avoid flash or other bandwidth-heavy visuals that may bog down a mobile device; publishing in both text and html versions gives your readers the text option, which is friendlier for mobile users.
Don’t forget a snappy subject line – on mobile it’s more important to avoid the use of all caps, keep it short and get to the point with a compelling message or offer.
Finally, think about localizing your offer. Catch your mobile readers at the point of purchase with relevant, local offers that speak directly to their needs.For those business owners who might think that email newsletters are old fashioned and they should transition to blogs, Facebook pages, or other communication tools, what are your thoughts?
Multi-channel marketing is the way to go, and email marketing is the bedrock of any multi-channel strategy. Business owners should be looking at search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, keyword-optimized websites, program-specific website landing pages, blogs and more. The beauty of multi-channel marketing is that content from an email newsletter can be repurposed to feed all marketing channels, from collateral to blogs to point-of-purchase promotions.Why is the subject line so important in an email newsletter?
Thirty-five percent of subscribers open email based on the subject line. It’s often the only indication of what’s inside the email and needs to be well thought out. If your subscribers don’t understand the subject or don’t find it relevant, don’t expect them to open your email.
While you should test your subject lines based on your own audience’s preferences, research suggests the length of the subject line is less important than the quality of the text.
Always keep your message clear and concise, but don’t feel obligated to cut important text so that your subject line is within 5-7 words.
What every subject line requires:
Clear and concise text.
Proper description of what’s to come in the email.
Unique copy that won’t get overlooked amidst inbox clutter.In summary
As more and more users, use mobile devices, it is so very important to ensure that your subject lines are well thought out and eye catching.
Social media is booming, but email is still so critical to developing a relationship with your prospective and current customers.
Email marketing is important, it pays (literally) to spend some time (or appoint your consultant or relevant staff member) to ensure each email marketing message you send out is optimized for maximum impact.

One thought on “Email Marketing In A World of Mobility, Social Media and Short Attention Spans.”

I know constant.com are affordable at $30/monthly. Since I am MS Outlook addict, I thought there should be application ass-in for MS Outlook. And I found emailmerge apps for $39.00. I gave a try and downloaded it and have been using ever since.
it has worked so well. In 3 steps I can email merge with all my contact folders in MS Outlook and it does the magic. Respinse has been great and it gives me much more flexibility than hosted email marketing companies.
Just thought I share this with you.